Category: creative nonfiction

single dog/1

I’ve decided to start writing again. Not sure what to write about but just kind of feel like writing again. I guess writing is a way to talk to my unconscious self. There is voice in my head that needs to be listened to. Now that I’ve decided to write again, what should I write about? I’ve been chatting with strangers on the net. Should I write about that? Should I write about him? Should I write about myself? Or should I write about philosophy?! The big questions. What are they?

I am not sure but I should just keep writing until I find out what I want to write about. Then I should be okay. Sometimes I think I think too much. There is nothing to be worried about. I mean, what difference would it make, worrying or not worrying? I’d probably die sooner from the stress of worrying. That being said, if I just do what I feel like, would my life be better?I think once I stop worrying, I know what I really want to do. And if I just do that, then I would get satisfaction from fulfilling my desire. I think life is not only about fulfilling desires, but what would a life be like without fulfilling desires?    

I have been taking a walk to the beach almost every morning and it is very healing. I suspect myself to become depressed if I don’t see the ocean, though I didn’t think much about it in the beginning; I thought it was just good exercise.  I take a photo of the ocean and the island nearby and I sit on the bench and just listen to one song from my playlist and then return home.    Often I feel lost. Especially in the morning, I don’t know what to do with my time, and the day ahead can be a overwhelming dread.  What should I do today?  What do I want to do today?  What do I need to do today?

The questions started bugging me in the back of my head and tried to remind me to be someone who knows how to take care of herself, someone who knows what to do with herself and to be responsible for her life. A big lie. The truth is I don’t know what to do with myself or my time. And why should I? Because I am an adult who has already lived half of her life and a mother of two teenagers? That’s just bullshit. I never know what to do with myself. One day as I sit and look at the vast blueness and seeing the colors changing by the sunlight and the clouds at every moment, I realized that the ocean really heals. It feels like my emotions, good or bad, are all absorbed by the ocean: all is forgiven. And I am reset.

week 21/5/27

Most Sundays I get up late, but recently I have back pain, so this morning I decided to exercise by taking a walk to the beach.  The fastest route is 1.2 miles.

The windy, cloudy, and warm weather was a perfect day for taking a walk.  I loved the sweet white pikake flower on the neighborhood fence; I greeted the people walking their dogs; I took some pictures of the white puffy clouds; I listened to the birds chirping busily; I wondered if someone ever got caught grabbing ripped mangos hanging down from giant trees.

Uniformed policemen were enjoying their break as I walked past them, one with breakfast in his hand. Most of a half marathon’s participants on the bright orange coned-road were walking past me, except one old tall man who was still running. When I grow old, I’d love to be that old lady runner with a casual yet winning smile.

Unlike last time I saw it, the ocean today was colored in platinum in the morning sun. Perhaps the wet air had made it look sophisticated and chic, with a light touch of resilience. Nature is an artist is nature is an artist, indefinitely!

I was glad I didn’t go back to sleep; my back felt much better. Returning to my neighborhood about an hour later, I realized my day had just started as it was only 2 minutes past nine.

week 21

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I felt like doing nothing at all in the morning.  As always, waiting for Cycle Day 1 is the hardest.  I became restless and fatigued and depressed and moody after the fourth week.

But I knew I had to get water because we were out of it.  Although I couldn’t remember water makes up the 70% of which: the human body or Earth, it didn’t matter; no water no life.  Got to get water.

I tried to fight my resistance by timing myself with a stopwatch and 30 minutes later I arrived home with water and groceries.  Feeling like a winner and lucky (I got a dollar from a water machine guy wearing sunglasses because he was checking out the machine while I was using it), I was motivated to do the next necessary and important task (though I forget what it was).

I even managed to type for 20 minutes after lunch today.  Since writing is what I enjoy doing, I tend to spend more time for it than I probably should.  A 20 minutes timer reminded me to stop working, and as a result, I picked up the kids on time.

Having learned again and again how disastrous doing everything at the last minute could be, I found the balance between doing what you need to do and what you love is an art to master and being aware of the fact that I was depressed was probably the first step.

Rosamunde

Rosamunde, a piece by Schubert and the melody has been with me ever since I listened to it in my car. A Korean friend loaned me the CD which she told me that helped her with her piano practice.

Things were difficult for me in my high school years. By then, I was totally lost (following on from junior high). I didn’t make many friends and the friends I hung out with were the other foreign students from the ESL class. I was seeing this Taiwanese boy who I met at a party, who went to another high school.

The neighborhood the boy lived in was new and the park near his house had only a vast grass field with a swing, benches, and a table. I was old enough to drive, so I used to drive to this park and I would sit there by myself, jiggling on my journal, or smoking, in the cold cloudy weather, hope to see him without knowing when he could get out of his house.

The soothing and simplistic melody of Rosamunde reminds me of the park. Maybe a little melancholy, but it’s exactly how I felt at the time when I was in Ohio: alienated, lonely, yet the simple delight of seeing a boy was enough for me to stay out in the cold winter in a land that has almost nothing but green grass fields, the smell of which I loved the most.

I had to walk to school which took me 30 minutes when I missed the school bus. On the way to school or back home, I saw cows in the field. “There is nothing here!” I wrote a letter to my parents to beg them to let me return to Taiwan even though I was the one to ask them to let me go to school in Ohio. In Taipei, I could go shopping with my friends and eat good food whenever I wanted to.

The neighborhood we lived in was reasonably well off in the city of Columbus, and the public high school I went to was new. The high school students were mostly white and black people, and only a few Asian students: Japanese kids whose parents worked at a Honda plant and kids from Taiwan or Korea.

I tried very hard to get into the school basketball team because the boy I liked was in the basketball team and I thought I could see him if I was in the basketball team. Sports like football and basketball were popular in Ohio. I remember going to hockey and tennis tournaments with my aunt, who enjoyed all kinds of sports.

On the weekends, we’d go to a big shopping mall to buy clothes in stores like Express, or we mowed our lawns as a chore and when it was snowing, we had to clear the snow out of the driveway with a shovel. The climate was dry in Ohio and one simply couldn’t live without a lip balm. Even though I don’t remember much of Ohio, when I played Rosamunde at a small recital, I didn’t make a mistake like how I always did. I saw the park with the green grass field under a cloudy sky in my head and I was calm.